


Part 32: Justin

by oiuytrewq36



Series: Let's Hear It for the Boy [6]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:14:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26663521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oiuytrewq36/pseuds/oiuytrewq36
Summary: “So let’s just do it. Let’s just ... quit.”He widens his eyes. “Sunshine, I think you’ve just invented the cure to addiction. We should just stopwantingto smoke! How come I didn’t think of that?”“Fuck off,” I say. “Bitchy isn’t a good look on you.”“Everything’s a good look on me,” he says, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth and giving me a come-hither stare.I refuse to take the bait. For now, anyway. “What I mean is, we should stop with all the halfway shit, the gum, the patches.” And the secret early-morning runs to the corner store for a pack of Newports (me) or Marlboros (him), to be half-smoked and then thrown out in a fit of guilt (me) or chain-smoked in a club backroom in a fit of self-loathing (him), but we both pretend we don’t know about those.
Relationships: Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: Let's Hear It for the Boy [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928482
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	Part 32: Justin

**April**  
Everything hurts. My thigh muscles, too tired to keep holding me wrapped around Brian, are spasming as my legs fall open around his waist. The sweet fire of his dick inside me has changed to a deeper ache, and I know I’m going to be sore from this for at least a week, and my brain has already melted into a slurry of burning pleasure, but fuck, I still want more of him.

Brian wipes a thumb across my cheek, and I realize I’m crying, tiny hitching noises coming out of my mouth as tears stream down my face.

“Justin,” he’s saying, “Justin, stay with me, baby, come on.”

I moan - my throat hurts too, raw from screaming - and nod, shakily.

Brian takes my face in his hands. “Sunshine, you gotta tell me if you’re okay. Are you good?”

I nod again, more frantic, because I can’t bear the idea of him stopping, not when under all the aches and pains I can feel the blissful transcendent pleasure of total overindulgence almost within reach. “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m good, I’m good, I’m good,” I whisper, and he kisses my nose and wraps his arms tighter around me.

“You know,” Brian says, sense of humor apparently restored, “when you said ‘hey, wouldn’t it be hot if we bought some of those numbing condoms and you fucked me until I couldn’t come anymore,’ you failed to mention your tendency to lose your language skills after a couple of consecutive orgasms.”

I have to take a moment to put together an answer - totally proving his point, but fuck it - because all my available mental facilities are focused on the new rhythm he’s just found, perfect thick cock rubbing crystalline sparks up my spine with every stroke. “You ... act ... like ... I’ve ... done ... this ... before.”

He smiles at me. “Fair point.” I just keep on looking at him, drinking him in, torso glistening with sweat, strong arms locked around me, holding me steady for him. I started really losing track of time (among other things) somewhere around orgasm number four, but I know that we must be approaching the limits of the special benzocaine ointment purchased for the occasion.

“Don’t you need to come?”

Brian winces, and I realize that the numbing shit has definitely already worn off, and he’s been holding off by himself and not telling me because he’s a self-sacrificing idiot.

I stroke his cheek, pull him down for a kiss. “Come on, you’ve been so good to me. It’s your turn now.”

He groans, thrusts getting a little more jerky. I’m going to come again, I realize, and just the thought of how it’ll feel makes me clench around him, and he gasps.

I tangle my fingers in his hair and tug him even closer. “Come inside me,” I murmur, and he chokes out a string of expletives, snapping his hips hard enough that it’s pushing me up the bed, and I’m coming, dry, hard shocks of excruciating pleasure making me twitch and shudder, muscles convulsing, throbbing with dull pain, whimpering as he shoves all the way into me and moans long and low into my neck.

“Fucking _Christ_ , Sunshine,” Brian slurs, some amount of time later, lifting his head to kiss me soft and sweet. I just smile, weakly, making pathetic noises as he slips out of me and collects my noodly-limbed body in his arms.

“You called me ‘baby,’” I say, and he laughs. “You never call me ‘baby.’”

“Yeah, well, you looked like you were having a meltdown on my dick,” he says, tracing along my jawbone with the tip of his tongue. “I wasn’t really thinking too hard about my word choice.”

We make out for a while, smiling and nudging our faces against each other like lovesick high schoolers. Then Brian rolls onto his back, and I nestle into his chest, feeling deliciously spent.

He reaches for the bedside table, then stops. I probably shouldn’t say anything, but I’ve just had enough sex to knock out an ordinary person, so good judgment isn’t really an option here.

“Looking for a cigarette?”

He shrugs, pulling me closer. “Just hard to break the habit.”

“I know.” 

He looks at me then, lips curved just slightly towards a smile, and buries his face in my neck, breathes deep.

I ruffle his sweaty hair, fondly. “So, how about carrying me to the bath?”

He bursts out laughing, muffled against my collarbone, but I know he’s going to do it. Eventually.

  


**May**  
“Maybe we should just aim for moderation,” I say. “You know, instead of quitting altogether.”

Brian snorts. “Well, I thought about having a rule that I can only smoke after sex, except that-

“-that wouldn’t really bring you down much,” I say, smirking.

He leers back. “And anyway, the point of quitting is to, you know, quit.”

I put down the magazine I’m holding and look over at him, stretched out on the sofa. “So let’s just do it. Let’s just ... quit.”

He widens his eyes. “Sunshine, I think you’ve just invented the cure to addiction. We should just stop _wanting_ to smoke! How come I didn’t think of that?”

“Fuck off,” I say. “Bitchy isn’t a good look on you.”

“Everything’s a good look on me,” he says, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth and giving me a come-hither stare.

I refuse to take the bait. For now, anyway. “What I mean is, we should stop with all the halfway shit, the gum, the patches.” And the secret early-morning runs to the corner store for a pack of Newports (me) or Marlboros (him), to be half-smoked and then thrown out in a fit of guilt (me) or chain-smoked in a club backroom in a fit of self-loathing (him), but we both pretend we don’t know about those. 

He frowns. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“What about having to answer to Gus when he asks how we’re doing on the stopping-smoking front on the visit next month? Does that sound good?”

Brian sighs. “As much as I admire your persistent spirit, it’s a real pain in the ass when it’s directed at me, you know that?”

  


**June**  
But smoking is the last thing on Gus’s mind, it seems, when Mel and Linds and the kids come to New York on one of their quarterly East Coast visits. He barely talks all through dinner at the condo, and then, after picking at his plate for half an hour, gets up and heads for the living room, glued to some game on his phone, without being excused, J.R. trailing behind him.

Brian and I look at each other, then across the table. 

“Gus has been having a hard time lately,” Lindsay says.

“At school,” Mel adds. “Social stuff.”

“He’s not being bullied, is he?” Brian asks, left hand tightening into a fist around his fork. I take his right and squeeze it under the table.

“No, nothing like that,” Lindsay says. “He- well, see, there was this-”

“His girlfriend broke up with him,” Mel says.

Brian stares at them. “His _what_?”

Lindsay sighs. “We only found out about her a week ago. You know how middle-school relationships are.”

I’m almost certain he doesn’t, actually, but saying that probably wouldn’t be especially helpful right now.

“So,” Brian says, voice a little higher-pitched than he’d probably like, “Gus likes girls.”

“Exclusively girls, as far as we can tell,” Lindsay says.

Brian drains his glass of wine and pours out another.

With the way Mel’s smirking, combined with the obvious beginnings of a doom spiral on Brian’s part, I doubt that this conversation is heading anywhere productive, so I decide to try and channel my mother’s skill at diversion from awkward silences.

“Why don’t we take Gus for the day tomorrow?” I ask. “You two and J.R. can have a girls’ day out on the town, and Gus might be more willing to talk to adults who aren’t his parents.”

Mel and Linds look at me with identical delighted expressions.

“That’s a great idea!” Mel says.

“You’re always so thoughtful, Justin,” Lindsay says.

Brian just keeps staring at the bottom of his glass.

***

Later on, after they’ve gone, Brian comes up behind me at the kitchen sink and kisses the back of my neck.

“That was a good idea, asking to have Gus spend the day with us,” he says.

I smile. “What can I say? I know how Kinneys tick.”

He snorts. “Then how is it possible that I - _I_ \- produced a straight kid?”

I turn around to face him. “You know that’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Yeah, I do,” he says. “But- I don’t know anything about dating women. I barely know anything about dating men.”

I laugh. “I’ll deal with that part, don’t worry. Gus just needs a shoulder to cry on from you right now. Breakups hurt for everyone, gay, straight, or otherwise. I think that our relationship history will have prepared you sufficiently on that front.”

Brian grins at me, a little self-consciously. “Maybe if this girl left him for a fiddler.”

I kiss the tip of his nose and turn back around to start the dishwasher. “I left you for a violinist. There’s a difference.”

“What difference?”

“Fiddlers actually know how to throw a party.”

He laughs, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my cheek. “Sunshine, how do you always know just what to say?”

***

The next morning, I wake up early to pick up pastries from the French bakery down the block. When I get back, Gus is there, sitting at the kitchen island with Brian, and I’m struck, not for the first time, at how similar they are, how much Brian’s son he clearly is. They have the same features, strong jaw, Roman nose, dark hair, arched brows, and, right now, the same expression of carefully concealed misery. Shit.

I set the paper bag down on the countertop and beam at both of them. “I got croissants!”

“Thanks,” Gus says, eyes still down.

Brian smiles at me, thinly.

Clearly, this isn’t working, not that I really thought it would. Leaving two Kinney men alone to start a difficult conversation was never going to go well.

“So, Gus,” I say, once again imitating my mother, “your moms mentioned that you’ve been having a rough time lately.”

Gus’s head snaps up, eyes blazing fury. Another look I know well. “They fucking told you?”

Brian puts a hand on his arm, but Gus shakes it off. “They just want to make sure you’re okay,” Brian says.

Gus glares at him. “The fuck do they know? I can deal with this by myself.”

I set down a stack of plates, quite a bit harder than necessary, on the counter. “Yeah, I’m sure you can, but you shouldn’t. So you’re going to eat your fucking croissant, and the three of us” - I gesture in a vague circle - “are going to talk.”

Wide-eyed, Gus looks at Brian, then me, then back to Brian again.

“Just do what he says, kid,” Brian says, giving me a smile that’s somewhere between exasperated and adoring. “Believe me, you don’t want to know what happens if you don’t.”

***

“The thing I don’t get is,” Gus says, tearing off a piece of his second pastry and leaning back on the sofa, “I love Bella. I love her _so much_. But she doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”

Brian puts an arm around his shoulders. “That’s a hard thing about love. You can care a whole lot about someone, care about them more than anything, but sometimes- well, sometimes you might not be what they need.” He’s looking at Gus as he says it, but I know he knows I’m right here. It’s not like I didn’t know any of it, but I can never help the heartache when he talks about how he felt for me in the old days.

Gus looks over at me. “Did you and Dad ever break up and get back together?”

Brian laughs, and I do too. “Repeatedly, for about five years,” I say. “Although it’s debatable whether we were actually dating for the first one.”

“You were dating me,” Brian says, grinning. “I just didn’t notice until it was too late, and after that I was stuck with you for good.”

Gus is smiling. “So Bella and I aren’t over forever?”

“Maybe,” Brian says. “But she has to want to come back. Relationships are only worth having if both people want to be there.”

Gus sighs, then looks up at the ceiling. He doesn’t say anything for a while.

Then he sits up. “Shit. We sit next to each other in homeroom. What am I going to say?”

Brian smiles over at me, eyes soft and far away. “Just tell her that you hope the two of you can still be friends, if that’s something you want, and that if she ever needs you, you’ll be there.”

  


**July**  
“Well,” Brian says, opening the fridge and sticking his entire upper body inside, “this is total bullshit.”

“There are always rolling blackouts this time of year. And don’t let out the cold, the food’ll go bad.”

He withdraws his head and closes the door, sneering halfheartedly at nothing in particular. “Yeah, but normally there isn’t a record-breaking heatwave at the same time as said blackouts.”

I flop onto my back on the kitchen floor. He has a point - the condo is an oven right now, the heat sapping me of any and all motivation. “Want to go swimming upstairs?”

“What I want,” Brian says, coming over straddle my waist, “is for it to no longer be too hot to fuck.”

I grin up at him. “That’s very uncreative of you.”

He cocks his head. “Oh?”

I pull him down on top of me. The combined heat of our bodies is, if not unbearable, definitely uncomfortable, and he frowns. “Imagine it, you’d be all sweaty even before you started fucking my brains out, all slow and lazy from the heat,” I murmur against his neck, and he moans, mouth stretching into a devilish smile.

“I love your artist’s imagination,” he breathes, scattering tiny flaming kisses all over my face.

He’s just pushed my shirt up to my armpits, licking across my chest and then blowing on the trails of saliva, heavenly cool traces lighting up on my body, when the doorbell rings.

“Who the _fuck_ ,” he says, sitting up to glare at the door, “is that?”

I sigh and tug my shirt back down. “Guess we’d better find out.”

It’s Emmett, weirdly - I don’t know why anyone would leave a house with functioning air-conditioning right now - bouncing on his toes, an incandescent grin on his face as he walks into the condo.

Brian frowns, again. “Not that I don’t like having you and your neon pants around, Honeycutt, but what the fuck are you doing here?”

Emmett just keeps smiling, practically jumping up and down. “I just had to tell you two right away.” He holds out his left hand, and I realize that there is a very substantial sapphire ring on the third finger. “Duncan proposed!”

I leap up and run over to hug him, despite the heat, and he lifts me off the floor while we bounce up and down, laughing. I give Brian a look over Emmett’s shoulder, and he rolls his eyes and comes over to put his arms around both of us, mouth twitching into something close to a smile. 

“I’m so happy for you, Em,” I say, when he loosens his grip on me enough that I can breathe a little. 

“Thanks, baby,” he says, wiping away a tear from the corner of one eye. 

Brian lets go of us and strides off to the kitchen, and I’m about to yell at him to get his emotion-phobic ass back here when he returns with a bottle of Moët and three flute glasses. “Feel like taking a moment to celebrate? This shit’ll be too warm to drink in an hour or so.”

Emmett kisses him on the cheek. “Love you too, honey.”

***

“So,” Brian says, very obviously putting on his supportive-friend hat, “when’s the wedding?”

“September,” Emmett says, still smiling ear to ear. “We want to do the ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist church in Westfield, and then a big splashy reception at this _gorgeous_ restored manor right next door.”

“Planned to perfection by the master himself, I’m assuming,” I say, and he beams at me. 

“Of course. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with the job.” He takes a sip of champagne. “Teddy’s going to be my best man, of course, but I wanted to ask you both- would you be in the wedding party?”

I lean over and hug him again. “I’d love to,” I say, and he hugs me back, then looks over at Brian.

I stare at him meaningfully, and he raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t it bad luck to have a past fuck as a groomsman?”

Emmett laughs. “I think I can make an exception.”

“Hold on,” I say, taking in that exchange. “You’ve-”

“Didn’t I tell you about that?” Brian says, smirking.

“It was eons ago, baby,” Emmett says. “He had me about five seconds after Michael introduced us at Woody’s, back when he was still clawing his way up the corporate ladder.”

Brian lifts his glass. “To the bad old days.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Emmett says, then adds, “And, by the way, you _will_ be wearing a chrysanthemum boutonnière, and you will _not_ give me shit about it on my wedding day.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” I say, and Brian groans. Emmett pats him on the head, and we look at each other and laugh.

Eventually, Emmett goes home to his new fiancé, and the heatwave once again becomes our primary concern for the day.

That is, until I make the mistake of teasing Brian about the future photographic evidence of him wearing chrysanthemums. 

“Laugh it up now,” he says, mostly to the ceiling, lying flat on the floor next to me. “You sure as hell won’t be laughing when you see what kind of outfit goes with them.”

He grins at me, nastily, when my eyes widen. “Try this out with your artistic imagination: your hair and an acid-green tux.”

That mental image, it turns out, is the last straw for me. “Fuck this heat,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to go have a cold bath with the cigarettes I hid in my sock drawer and didn’t tell you about, and if you don’t give me any shit about that, I might even be compelled to share.”

He jumps to his feet. “Sounds good to me.”

***

“You’re a genius,” Brian says, putting his chin on my shoulder as I lean back against him in the cool water. 

“We’re going to hate ourselves for this later,” I muse, taking a long luxurious drag and then handing the cigarette to him.

He closes his eyes as he inhales, moaning like he’s halfway through one of my blowjobs. “Yeah, but at the moment it feels pretty fucking great.”

I can’t argue with that, so I change the subject. “Is it weird that I love that you’ve screwed almost everyone I’ve ever met?” 

He laughs. “Probably. But it’s also hot as hell, so don’t worry about it.”

  


**August**  
The next time one of us weakens, it’s Brian, during a business trip to Pittsburgh. I don’t have any shows for the next two weeks, so I come along with him, and one day I get back from my mother and Tucker’s house and catch the distinct scent of fresh smoke in the loft.

My expression must give me away, because he looks almost embarrassed when I walk over to his desk. 

“I found half a pack in one of the tiny drawers in the kitchen,” he says, not exactly looking at me. “And I was having trouble concentrating on the boards, and-”

I hoist myself onto the desk so that I’m sitting right in front of him, and take his hands in mine. “You don’t need to explain. I get it. We’re in the same boat, remember?”

He sighs. “I’ve always prided myself on not being a quitter. It would be very poetic for the first thing I quit on to be quitting.”

He gets up and walks over to lie on the sofa, and I join him, stretching out on top of him. “You’ll get there eventually. I think it’s really sweet of you to do this for Gus.”

He puts his hands on my shoulders. “Gus was the catalyst, but- he’s not the only reason I need to quit.”

I think he has more to say, so I just look at him. 

“For a long time, I didn’t think I wanted to live to be thirty,” he says, finally, not meeting my eyes.

I rest my forehead against his temple and kiss his cheek. “I know.”

“After that, I sort of just avoided thinking about it until the cancer happened, and then it was all I _could_ think about.”

Stroking his hair, I close my eyes and breathe him in. I’d imagined the options he probably considered after the diagnosis, but we’ve never talked about it, about how his not-quite-jokes about dying young and going out in a blaze of glory stopped abruptly after he came back from the surgery.

“And then I had an easy way out, a clean, quick break. And I didn’t want it.”

Hot tears are starting to prick at the corners of my eyes, but I don’t move.

“I realized- I wanted more than I’d gotten. I wanted to live more, to spend more time with the people I love. To spend as much time as I can possibly get loving you, being loved by you.”

I feel shaky, ready to fly apart, and when I take in a quivering breath he clutches me tight against him and presses his lips to the top of my head.

“I want as much of you as I can get, Justin,” he murmurs. “And if this will get me more time, it’s worth it, however long it takes.”

I want to tell him so many things, that I love him, that I’m so proud of him, that being with him like this makes me feel like I’ve found the missing half of my soul, but my throat feels too swollen and tight, so I just take his face in my hands and kiss him with as much passion as I can manage, and he melts beneath me, beautiful, alive, mine.

  


**September**  
The tuxedos aren’t acid green, in the end. They’re pretty nice, actually, black jacket and pants, and-

“A _peach vest_?” Brian says. “Tell me that you did not just say that the outfit includes a peach vest.”

I shrug. “It’s what Emmett wants. He says it’ll look great under the lighting at the church.”

“You know I don’t wear pastels.”

“Do it or I’ll ask Quinn to break into your computer and permanently replace all your screensavers with pictures from hetero skin mags,” I say, not looking up from the grocery list I’m working on.

He walks over, looking genuinely horrified. “You wouldn’t.”

I smile sweetly up at him. “I would.”

“I’m starting to think it was a bad idea to teach you all my dastardly ways in your youth,” he says.

I snort. “Oh, don’t worry. I was picking the lock on my dad’s whiskey cabinet long before I met you.”

“So I didn’t corrupt you? And here I was, thinking that you’d have been a perfect little angel if I hadn’t picked you up from under a street light and showed you what a rim job was.”

I stand up and kiss him on the cheek. “Nope. It was nice having you around to buy my drinks, though.”

***

The peach vests actually do look really nice under the lights - they’re made to match Emmett’s suit, peach silk with rhinestone lapels, which of course he looks fabulous in. The wedding is beautiful, emotional and over-the-top, just like I know he wanted it, and he and Duncan never stop glowing, from the ceremony all the way through the night, into the reception.

They’ve hired a DJ, and after all the speeches have been given (Ted cries, Lindsay cries, Debbie cries, Carl cries, and I get pretty misty-eyed myself), Emmett and Duncan lead the way to the ballroom, which has been given a Babylon-style facelift.

“Do you wish we’d done this? Had a big fancy party?” Brian says, as we sway together among all the other dancing couples during a slow song. 

I lean forward to kiss him. “It was something I thought I wanted a long time ago. But honestly, all the stress, the planning, coordinating friends and relatives - I’m glad we did ours the way we did.”

He nods, looping his arms around my neck. “Me too,” he says, smiling, and I pull him in for a longer, deeper kiss as we spin together in the center of the room.

  


**October**  
Much as I love New York parties, Halloween at Babylon is just something else. Brian’s been planning it for months, our first one back in Pittsburgh in forever, with a whole group of us chipping in ideas - me, because I’ll always be a club kid at heart, Emmett, because he’s physically unable to resist planning any event that’s mentioned within a hundred feet of him, Frances, because she’s Frances, and Daphne, because she’s grown into a level of fag hag that rivals Debbie.

The club is packed, like it always is, and Brian and I are dancing in the center of a circle of our friends as black and purple glitter falls on us from above. A tall muscular guy who’s been making eyes at Brian for the past twenty minutes finally pushes through the crowd to deliver a fairly lame pick-up line, but Brian’s a sucker for toppy guys who’ll bottom for him (how do I feel about being included in that, you ask? fine, actually), so I wave him off to the green-lit backroom door and wander up the stairs.

I’m leaning on the balcony when Ted sidles up to me. 

“Prowling for fresh meat?”

I laugh. “Not really. I’m a little worn out, to be honest.”

He grins. “Don’t tell me Brian’s still outpacing you at past forty.”

I’m pleasantly drunk and I’ve always had a self-control problem when it comes to gossiping, so I go a little more full-disclosure than I usually would. “Let’s just say I didn’t base a superhero off of him for nothing. He made me come five times after we got in last night.”

Ted snorts. “Bullshit.”

I shrug. “Yeah, you’re right, it was actually seven times, but I didn’t think you’d believe that.”

He stares at me, wide-eyed, and then bursts out laughing. “Well, good for you. I’m amazed either of you have the energy to do anything at all right now, let alone party All Hallows’ Eve away.”

“I think it might be thanks to us quitting cigarettes, actually,” I say, and then laugh. “Or that’s a handy thing to believe so that I don’t end up trawling the walkway for secondhand smoke instead of blowjobs.”

Ted laughs. “Want some addiction advice from a former crystal queen?”

I’ve never talked with him about his addiction (or recovery, I realize), but I nod. “Sure.”

“There’s a big element of acceptance to quitting anything, whether it’s meth or booze or poker, although I can’t play poker, so I’m not really speaking from experience there.” He sighs. “Basically, if it helps you to know it, you’ll eventually get used to the feeling of needing to use and then not using, and maybe one day it’ll go away. I still want meth. Frequently. But I don’t use meth, because it’ll destroy my life and then I’ll die. Obviously, your situation is less, uh, intense, but it worked for me as a thought pattern.”

“You’ve thought a lot about it, huh?”

“Group therapy. Don’t knock it till you try it.” He smiles, good-humored, and I’m suddenly struck by how little I know about Ted. 

I turn away from the balcony. “Brian’s off with some trick, so I’ve got time to kill,” I say. “Feel like a virgin mojito?”

A surprised look flashes across his face, and then he smiles again, broader. “I’d like that.”

  


**November**  
“Mmmmmm.”

I kiss the edge of his left ear. “Feel good?”

Brian reaches back to grab my ass, force me even deeper inside him. “So good.”

Lowering myself so I’m plastered over his back, I nuzzle the side of his face, and he turns his head to kiss me.

God, he’s so _tight_ , beautiful body yielding so sweetly to me as I roll my hips.

“Oh,” Brian whispers, as I shift on top of him, just barely changing the angle of my thrusts. “Oh, _God_.”

I laugh, softly, for no reason other than that he’s gorgeous when he lets me see what I do to him. “Right there, huh?”

“Yeah, yes, ohfuck, _Justin_ -”

“Okay,” I murmur, pushing back against that spot, and he whines, twisting the sheets around clenched hands. “Okay, I’ve got you.”

He turns to kiss me again, and I sink into the feeling of his body surrounding me, warm and safe and perfect.

“I love you,” I breathe, into his mouth. He moans and lets go of the sheets to thread his fingers though mine. I push in a little harder than I’ve been doing, and he gasps and shoves back against me.

“More,” he hisses, face shoved into a pillow. “Give me more, you _bastard_ , Justin, _yes_ -”

I let go a little, allowing myself to thrust rougher, start to really pound him. “Fuck, you feel so good,” I tell him, kissing along the top of his spine, and he just keeps making helpless little noises into the pillow and clutching his hands around mine. “So good for me, Brian. You’re so beautiful. I love you so much.”

He whimpers, and I know it’s because even this many years on, he never knows what to do with himself when I shower him with this kind of praise and affection, unrelenting, raw, heartfelt love. I kiss his cheek, murmur, “It’s okay, come on, you don’t have to put on a show for me. I love you, Brian. I’m yours,” and he makes a choked sobbing noise and comes, rutting against the mattress, fingernails digging into my hands, bucking and gasping and moaning as I ride him through it, my own orgasm hitting just as his passes its crescendo. 

I start to roll off of him, but he puts a hand on my hip. 

“Want me to stay?”

He nods against the pillow. “Just for a little.”

I smile into his neck and relax on top of him. Just before I drift off, he tightens his hands around mine and whispers, “I love you too.”

  


**December**  
When I get back to the condo, Brian’s there. He has some guy bent over the back of the couch, who’s wailing in unencumbered ecstasy as Brian rams into him.

I walk over and kiss Brian on the mouth, slow and deep, and he groans and runs a hand through my hair, pulling me closer.

“You know, when I said you should take a mental health day off from work, this wasn’t really what I was picturing.”

He smirks, raising one hand and bringing it down in the trick’s ass. “Really? You know me better than that.”

The trick has noticed me, and he’s looking curiously over his shoulder at us in between gasps.

“Oh, how rude of me,” Brian says. “Justin, this is, um-”

“Kevin,” the guy pants.

“Right. Kevin. Kevin, this is Justin.” Brian starts undoing my jeans with one hand while he leverages himself on the couch with the other. He looks at me, biting his lip. “Have any pressing alternate commitments?”

I grin. “Lots, but it’s not like I’ll be able to concentrate with the sounds of you mid-fuck in the background.”

He returns my smile, just this side of feral, and shoves a hand into my shorts, kissing me again, filthy and a tiny bit possessive.

***

“So,” Kevin says, retrieving his pants from the other side of the couch, “are you two, like, boyfriends minus the exclusivity stuff, or what?”

“Married, actually,” I say, and kiss Brian on the cheek. “Almost three years now,” he adds.

“Huh,” Kevin says. “Cool.”

He pulls a battered pack of cigarettes out of one pocket and offers them to us. Brian and I exchange a look. 

“No thanks,” I say. “We’re trying to quit.”

Kevin brightens. “Good for you. Very responsible.”

Brian winces.

“Let me show you out,” I say.

  


**January**  
“There’s food at this, right?” Frances says.

“There was when I was here earlier today,” I say.

“Thank God,” Daphne says. “Talking to strangers is so much easier with mini quiches.”

Frances grins. “I think I’m going to make that my new mantra, if you don’t mind.”

Cynthia jogs up to us on improbable six-inch heels. “Oh, good, you’re here. The clients are going to start showing up in ten minutes, and Brian is adjusting the painting in the main room for the tenth time today because it ‘doesn’t feel right,’ so-”

I laugh. “I’ll go deal with that, then.”

***

“Hey,” I say, and Brian turns around. “So I don’t know exactly what needs to be done before the clients arrive, but I don’t think it’s moving that canvas half an inch to the left.”

“I was thinking the right, actually,” he says. 

I roll my eyes. “As the artist, I’m going to say that the way the painting is hanging right now is perfect. Exquisite. Exactly how I envisioned it.”

Brian snorts. “You’re so full of shit.”

“And you need to do something other than micro-redecoration.”

He sighs. “I know. It’s just- this has to go well, tonight. New York clients have a hundred great agencies available to them at a given time, and if I can capture a few more with a dazzling New Year’s bash, it’d be huge.”

I straighten his tie. “It’s going to be dazzling, because you’re behind it. So go help Cynthia get ready to take New York by storm for the fifteenth time, and I’ll come be your hot and mysterious artist husband to distract all the nonessential clients when you need me.”

Brian kisses me, hands on either side of my neck. “God, I love you.”

I peck him on the lips. “And I love you. And your clients will too, although hopefully not in the same way.”

He laughs. “Almost certainly not. Although you should meet Gregor Hendrickson from Hendrickson Yogurts. He’s ninety-seven, to be fair, but the man can really wear the hell out of some elbow patches.”

I grin. “I’ll just have to let him know he’s got some steep competition.”

“He certainly does.” Brian leans in to kiss me one more time, and then he’s gone, so I putter around the room, organizing my pockets (business cards on the right side, condoms and joint on the left, you do _not_ want to mix them up) and messing with my hair until Daphne comes to retrieve me.

The party is a smash hit, of course, and Brian has dinner plans with several promising interested parties before the clock strikes twelve. When the countdown starts, Brian nuzzles my ear and murmurs, “Feel like finding out which of my potential clients won’t be able to handle a fag as their campaign director?”

I grin. “Do you even have to ask?”

So, as everyone else toasts the new year before exchanging practiced New York cheek kisses, Brian sets down his glass, dips me backward, and full-on frenches me in the center of the room. Most people cheer - I do see a few old-school family-man types shifting nervously, but Brian can’t stand those assholes anyway - and he sets me back on my feet as he picks up the glass to make his toast. 

“To good company and good booze,” he says, smirking, and another chorus of cheers goes up as he slips an arm around me, fingers stroking meaningfully over my condom pocket.

“Bathroom down the hall, five minutes,” I mutter, and he laughs and kisses my cheek. “I do love a man with a plan.”

  


**February**  
“Brian,” I say, and then I have to pause to collect enough thought power to continue, because - well, you’ll see in a moment. “Brian, what the fuck.” 

********** **

Brian smirks. “What?”

********** **

I stare at him, lying naked on the bed on black silk sheets that I definitely did not know we owned, an entire church’s worth of candles burning on every flat surface, white petals scattered over the bedspread and floor. “What,” I say, and gesture around the room, unable to take my eyes off of him, sort of wondering why I’m not just flinging myself at him and begging him to take me, “the _fuck_.”

********** **

Brian shrugs, bronzed skin glowing in the candlelight. Ugh, I need him inside me yesterday. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

********** **

Right, that’s why. “You hate Valentine’s Day.”

********** **

He stands up, long lean body fluid as he moves to stand in front of me. He puts a hand on the back of my neck. “I hate fake commercial holidays that cramp my style when I’m developing campaign concepts.”

********** **

I look at him. “Exactly.”

********** **

“But I like spoiling you, fucking you, making you happy ... making you come your brains out ...” he purrs, and I gulp, my composure slipping. He laughs his sexy dark laugh, then leans even closer, until his lips are against my ear. “Come on, Sunshine, who gives a fuck what day it is? I just want to make you feel good.”

********** **

He keeps talking, moving one hand down to cup the now very significant bulge in my pants. “I’ll drag you to heaven and back over and over again until you beg for mercy,” he breathes, and my knees nearly buckle. “I’ll make you come until you pass out. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be so loose and sloppy that I’ll be able to fuck you without lube when you wake up again.”

********** **

“Jesus _fuck_ , Brian,” I whimper, and he laughs again and bites my ear. “You’re gonna make me come in my pants.”

********** **

He grins. “Oh, we can’t have that.” He unbuttons my waistband and slides my pants and underwear down my legs, and I step out of them, pulling my shirt over my head, magnetized toward him as he sits back down on the bed.

********** **

He’s staring at me with a ravenous expression that makes me want to just roll over and let him obliterate me, but I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. Yet.

********** **

“So why this year?” I say, straddling his lap and giving his dick a few tugs.

********** **

He strokes my hair. “They had rose petals for sale at the grocery store today, you know, for the holiday. It got me thinking.”

********** **

I nip at his chin. “Yeah?”

********** **

“Yeah. Chocolates too, by the way,” he says, nodding at a big heart-shaped box on the bedside table. “Swiss, none of that chalky shit. And wine.”

********** **

I fight to hold back a whimper. “You bought me chocolates and wine for Valentine’s Day?”

********** **

He wraps a hand around my dick, still grinning. “If I knew it’d turn you on this much I’d have done it years ago.”

********** **

Fuck it. I lunge for his mouth, kissing him hard enough to knock him flat on his back, and he laughs and rolls us over, taking charge of the kiss, clutching at my shoulders and rubbing his tongue against mine. 

********** **

“Fuck me,” I gasp, all ideas of dignity forgotten. He kisses me one more time, hard, bruising, and then pushes me over so I’m on my knees on the bed.

********** **

Brian starts kissing down my spine, then licking, and when he reaches my ass he spreads me with both hands and just goes to town, spearing his tongue inside, growling and slurping and eating me like he’s starving and I’m dinner.

********** **

I can’t string enough sounds together to make a word, so I just moan stray syllables into the mattress instead. He reaches one hand up to yank on my hair, pulling my head up and back. “I want to hear,” he rasps, and then ducks back down and resumes his calculated destruction of my sanity. I rest my face on my forearms and moan-sob out a collection of increasingly pitiful noises, and he just keeps _going_ , tongue going flat to lick over the outside of my asshole and then pointed again to poke inside with a few of his fingers.

********** **

Christ, I can’t take much more of this. I manage to put the right words together to plead for his cock, and he makes a beautiful savage sound and reaches for a condom. I look over my shoulder, and he wipes his mouth and winks, shoving three fingers into my ass and tearing a low groan from my chest.

********** **

He’s so fucking hard, hot and slick and hitting every single button there is inside me, shoving my face into the mattress and then pulling me back up by my hair. I try to get up onto my elbows, but he’s thrusting so hard that I get knocked back down immediately, writhing and moaning under him.

********** **

“Yes,” I gasp, as he lands a particularly brutal thrust. “Yes, give it to me, you prick. Fuck, I love you.”

********** **

He laughs, and it does something spectacular to the way he’s pushing into me, and fuck, I’m coming hard enough that my vision blurs, Brian groaning on top of me.

********** **

When he stops shaking, he slides out and kisses me. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sunshine,” he murmurs, just a trace of flippancy in his voice, and I laugh and kiss him back and wrap my arms around his neck, eager for whatever beautiful torture he’s planned next but happy for now to just be held, loving and being loved.

  


**March**  
“This place never changes, does it?” I ask, as the Liberty Diner door shuts behind us. 

Brian looks around as we walk to a booth. “Never has, and never will, if I have anything to say about it.”

I slide in across from him. “Is that nostalgia I sense? It can’t be.”

He doesn’t even sneer at me for that. Jesus.

I rest my hand on his. “Seriously, are you okay?”

He smiles. “Just looking back at my youth from the vantage point of old age.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re nowhere near ‘old age.’ You’re only-”

“Don’t say it.” He leans back against the wall and looks around for a while before he speaks. “This was the first place that ever felt like a real home for me. Mikey and I did our homework at the counter on school nights while Deb finished her shift, and then when we got older I got him a fake ID to match mine so we could get into the clubs.”

I laugh. “A real child prodigy.”

He grins. “Oh, you bet. And you thought you were so smooth at seventeen with Vic’s Babylon card.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. But I could talk my way up to twenty-two, easy.”

Debbie comes over, notebook in hand. “Telling tall tales about your glory days?”

“It’s a wonderful thing about being in love,” Brian says. “Always a willing audience.” I flip him off, and he smirks and looks over at Debbie. “Do you remember that time when you grounded Mikey and he snuck out to Babylon with me for his first Leather Ball?”

She laughs. “Shit, how could I forget? I was so mad.” 

She turns to me. “So it’s probably one in the morning - I mean, you know the scene, studs and chaps everywhere, bass thumping, there’s a guy getting fisted on one of the podiums-”

Brian’s laughing now too. “And Deb comes in and just yells, ‘MICHAEL CHARLES NOVOTNY, YOU ARE IN SOME DEEP SHIT!’ And she hauled him off the dance floor by his ear, with half of Pittsburgh there to watch-”

“-but not before I chewed you out in front of the other half for corrupting my kid,” Debbie says, grinning at him, and he looks almost sheepish.

“Not for the gay shit, obviously, for teaching Mikey how to make a pillow dummy to put in his bed,” Brian says, in response to my questioning look.

“You’ve cleaned up pretty nice since then, though, I have to say,” Debbie says, ruffling his hair. He smoothes it back into position, a strange look on his face.

“You just say that because you get all the credit for whacking some sense into me every six months or so,” he says, finally.

“Well, me and this one,” she says - my turn to get my hair messed up - and Brian smiles softly across the table at me. 

Then he smirks. “To be fair, Justin does have the ultimate leverage of withholding sex when I’m being a dick.”

Debbie snorts. “Good on you, Sunshine.” She fishes out a pen from her apron. “What can I get you boys?”

“Pink plate special for me,” I say.

“Sure, hon, and for your husband I’m going to guess - black coffee, six sugars, side of poppers?”

Brian smiles placidly at her. “Actually, I think I’ll have the bacon cheeseburger. Extra pickles.”

Debbie stares at him. “Okay-”

He holds up a finger. “And one more thing - a big slice of the double chocolate fudge cake, two forks.”

She puts the back of her hand against his forehead, and I laugh when Brian rolls his eyes. “Are you sure you’re doing all right? Because-“

“Tonight’s a special occasion,” he says. 

“Six months nicotine-free,” I explain. “Both of us.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Debbie says. “Taking good care of yourselves _and_ eating some real food for once? I think you might have kicked that Peter Pan complex once and for all, Brian.”

Brian takes my hand under the table, matching my fond smile with one of his own. “Not entirely. Some things are worth staying young at heart for.”


End file.
